Here’s your child welfare news from the past week!
From “Here and Now” on NPR/WBUR, an excellent piece on how we can keep children and youth with serious behavioral health issues out of the foster care system.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a long piece on a type of child abuse you don’t hear about a lot: Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another Child, what we used to call “Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.” Wikipedia has an interesting list of famous cases of the mental disorder.
There’s significant debate over a Kansas bill that would give foster parents more leverage in adopting a child who has been in their care for an extended period.
Being the prophet that I am, I wrote a few weeks back about the debate over whether children should be allowed to work and, if so, in what kinds of jobs. Since then, Arkansas has passed and the Governor has signed a bill allowing children 14 and older to work without a special permit. According to Bloomberg, this bill is part of a trend towards easing child labor restrictions. The New York Times and the Washington Post don’t like the trend.
Utah’s Governor signed into law a first-of-its-kind bill limiting children’s access to social media. Is it enforceable?
Utah, again: This time proud of their short times to permanency for children in care.
How does a sex-trafficking victim in foster care get placed with a sex trafficker as a paid fictive kin placement?
A grand jury in San Bernardino County, CA believes its child protection agency is too broken to fix.
California wants to use Medicaid to provide rent.
Bonus news! This US News article, “Tips for Parents of Law School Applicants,” popped up in my Google search for child welfare news. Here’s my tip: If your college graduate can’t figure out how to apply to law school on his or her own, then law school’s probably not a good idea.